I accidentally designed a game
Following the announcement that Wizards of the Coast would be coming out with Dark Sun for 4th edition D&D, I've been on a bit of a Dark Sun kick. so I was going back and reading DS stuff, which I never did in great depth in the 2nd edition days.
And while reading about the cycle of years being tied to the irregular cycles of Athas's two moons, my mind created an interesting game mechanic based off of the interesting, flavorful names of each year and the overlapping 7 and 11 year cycles of the moons. I didn't mean to: I was just enjoying the Dark Sun Campaig boxed set in anticipation of the 4e version next year.
But instead my mind seized on this cycle of years, threw in a bit of Guillotine and Johnathan Walton's Avatar: The Last Airbender game and got a game that is intimately tied to the Dark Sun setting, but otherwise is about as different from D&D as I can imagine.
It still needs work, including refining the list of associations of each Theme Card. And I probably need to explain the Theme Card cycle more clearly, and give lots of examples. But I think it might be serviceable and interesting to play. And it's only a few pages long, so you might as well read it, right? I call it "A World of Fire and Sand" after a line from the original campaign setting book, as I suck at writing titles.
I think the best use for the game might be as interludes in a regular D&D Dark Sun game, like as myths or bard songs or strange rumors that are told in between normal adventures of killings monsters in the desert wastes.
And while reading about the cycle of years being tied to the irregular cycles of Athas's two moons, my mind created an interesting game mechanic based off of the interesting, flavorful names of each year and the overlapping 7 and 11 year cycles of the moons. I didn't mean to: I was just enjoying the Dark Sun Campaig boxed set in anticipation of the 4e version next year.
But instead my mind seized on this cycle of years, threw in a bit of Guillotine and Johnathan Walton's Avatar: The Last Airbender game and got a game that is intimately tied to the Dark Sun setting, but otherwise is about as different from D&D as I can imagine.
It still needs work, including refining the list of associations of each Theme Card. And I probably need to explain the Theme Card cycle more clearly, and give lots of examples. But I think it might be serviceable and interesting to play. And it's only a few pages long, so you might as well read it, right? I call it "A World of Fire and Sand" after a line from the original campaign setting book, as I suck at writing titles.
I think the best use for the game might be as interludes in a regular D&D Dark Sun game, like as myths or bard songs or strange rumors that are told in between normal adventures of killings monsters in the desert wastes.